Depends on the disk (magnetic hard drive, density, type of storage (eg smr), flash/SSD etc). AFAIK for a recent (say, 2010 and later) drive - there's little to

Depends on the disk (magnetic hard drive, density, type of storage (eg smr), flash/SSD etc). AFAIK for a recent (say, 2010 and later) drive - there's little to indicate random/"smart" patterns are better than just a single pass off all zeroes. Even if you consider an adversary with the capability to analyze drive with magnetic force microscopy. https://www.howtogeek.com/115573/htg-explains-why-you-only-have-to-wipe-a-disk-once-to-erase-it/ https://www.howtogeek.com/115573/htg-explains-why-you-only-h... https://www.sans.org/blog/overwriting-hard-drive-data/ https://www.sans.org/blog/overwriting-hard-drive-data/ "Data Reconstruction from a Hard Disk Drive using Magnetic Force Microscopy", 2013 Author(s): Kanekal, Vasu https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26g4p84b https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26g4p84b A quick skims seems to indicate the NSA recommends degaussuing and destruction: https://www.nsa.gov/resources/everyone/media-destruction/ https://www.nsa.gov/resources/everyone/media-destruction/ Nist 800-80: https://www.nist.gov/publications/guidelines-media-sanitization-0 https://www.nist.gov/publications/guidelines-media-sanitizat... Refers to: https://cmrr.ucsd.edu/resources/secure-erase.html https://cmrr.ucsd.edu/resources/secure-erase.html Who's readme: https://cmrr.ucsd.edu/_files/hdd-erase-readme.txt https://cmrr.ucsd.edu/_files/hdd-erase-readme.txt And q'n'a indicate that single pass sata secure erase is generally considered sufficient - it typically does a single pass, but should also write over all bad blocks etc. See also: https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase